SOCIETY. INTEGRATION. EDUCATION. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference

EDUCATORS’ OPINION ON WEBINARS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Andreas Ahrens, Jelena Zascerinska, Hariharan Ramar, Natalia Andreeva

Abstract

Three strategic priorities of the European Union such as Open Innovation, Open Science, and Openness to the World reveal that higher education focused on training of students as prospective specialists needed by society and production orient higher education how to change. In higher education the transition from distance learning to on-line learning has started. For on-line learning in higher education, webinars are becoming an indispensable tool. However, educators’ opinion on webinars in higher education has not been analyzed. The aim of the present contribution is to analyze educators‘ opinion on webinars in higher education underpinning elaboration of a hypothesis on use of webinars in on-line educational environment within higher education. The meaning of such key concepts as webinar, opinion, on-line learning and on-line educational environment is studied.Moreover, the study shows how the steps of the process are related: identifying webinars → defining educators’ opinion → empirical study → conclusions. The empirical study was carried out in September 2015. The sample included 58 educators from the teacher training institution, namely Dr. Sivanthi Aditanar College of Education in India. The study results demonstrate that the educators’ opinions on webinars in higher education are homogeneous. A hypothesis on use of webinars in on-line educational environment within higher education is elaborated. Directions of further research are proposed.

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Andreas Ahrens received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Rostock in 1996. From 1996 to 2008, he was with the Institute of Communications Engineering of the University of Rostock, from which he received the Dr.-Ing. and Dr.-Ing. habil. degree in 2000 and 2003, respectively. In 2008, he became a Professor for Signal and System theory at the Hochschule Wismar, University of Technology, Business and Design, Germany. His main field of interest includes error correcting codes, multiple-input multiple-output systems, iterative detection for both wireline and wireless communication as well as social computing.

Jelena ZascerinskaCentre for Education and Innovation Research Latvia

Jeļena Zaščerinska received the diploma in Russian Philology in 1994 from the Daugavpils University, Daugavpils, Latvia, Master Degree in English Philology in 2002 from the University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia. In 2011 she was awarded Dr. paed. Degree for her promotion thesis “Development of Students’ Communicative Competence in English studies for Academic Purposes” focused on the evaluation of efficiency of the process of the development of students’ communicative competence within English for Academic Purposes studies. In January 2012 she became a leading researcher at the Centre for Education and Innovation Research, Riga, Latvia. In 2012 Jeļena Zaščerinska was bestowed expert rights by the Latvian Council of Science, Riga, Latvia and by Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency, Brussels, Belgium. In 2012 Jeļena Zaščerinska was awarded a research grant for young scientists from the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Academischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) for the research project “Latvia’s Perspective in the Tempus Project ECDEAST: A Model-Driven Comparative Analysis of Engineering Curricula” implemented at Hochschule Wismar, University of Applied Sciences, Technology, Business and Design, Wismar, Germany, duration: 1 June – 30 November 2012. In 2012 Jeļena Zaščerinska was awarded a research grant for post-doctoral researchers from the „Triple I - Integration, Interaction and Institutions” of the ERASMUS MUNDUS Action 2-Strand 1 of the European Community Mobility Programme for the research project “English for Academic Purposes Studies: A Model Driven Comparative Analysis via Mixed Method Approach in Latvia and Russia” implemented at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, Russia, duration: December 1, 2012 – September 30, 2013. In 2013 Jeļena Zaščerinska was awarded a research grant for research stays for university academics and scientists from the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Academischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) for the research project “Educating the Engineer 2013: Advance 21st Century Innovation in Engineering Curriculum” implemented at Hochschule Wismar, University of Applied Sciences, Technology, Business and Design, Wismar, Germany, duration: 1-31 January 2014. The major results of joint research activities were reflected in a number of publications and international conferences. In December 2013 Jeļena Zaščerinska was bestowed expert rights by Horizon 2020 – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, the European Commission, Brussels, Belgium. In June 2013 she was appointed as the Editorial Board Member and Reviewer, International Journal of Modern Education Forum (IJMEF). Dr. Jeļena Zaščerinska is a member of the international research team which carried out an extensive research on integration of the results of interdisciplinary research into higher education and presented the research results in a number of joint publications. Her main field of research interest comprises cognitive linguistics, linguistic semantics and pragmatics, entrepreneurship education, teacher education as well as interdisciplinary (linguistic and engineering) research.

Natalia Andreeva has been working as the director of Resource Centre of Foreign Languages at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, Russia.She has received Dr. paed. Degree.The numerous papers Dr. Natalia Andreeva has prolifically authored and published over the last years. Dr. Natalia Andreeva productively contributes to the research on language issues in higher education education. Indexation of her publications by a number of well-acknowledged international research publication databases such as Thomson Reuters Conference Proceedings Citations Index, DBLP, Library of Congress and others confirms that Dr. Natalia Andreeva’s publications have made a decisive contribution to the advancement of such scientific disciplines as linguistics, sociology, anthropology, pedagogy and, in particular, pedagogy of higher education and research methodology.